Gender as a social construct
Gender is the range of characteristics pertaining to, and differentiating between, masculinity and femininity. It is determined by biological sex. Most of the people from the left-wing (e.g. SJWs) argue that it is purely or mostly a social construct, that it is not automatically determined by biological sex, and therefore it can be changed. Unfortunately, many people now have no problem with rejecting facts which are inconvenient to the worldview, because they believe objective reality to be either irrelevant or non-existent, as opposed to supporters of empiricism and rationalism. As feminists, and SJWs continue to insist that the claim is true, it is a harmful way of thinking and not supported by scientific evidence. History The perception of gender as a social construct has its origins in one of the biggest cases of science fraud in history. In the early 1960s, a psychologist from New Zealand who lived in the United States, called John William Money, was a proponent of the theory of gender neutrality, the idea that sexual identity was the product of social conditioning and not a product of biology, that therefore a boy could mentally become a girl and vice versa if they were raised that way. In order to prove this he would need a test subject, a person who could be raised as the opposite sex from an early age with a child sibling with identical genome to rule out any genetic variable that could interfere. On August 22, 1965, two identical twins were born in Winnipeg, Canada, Bryan and Bruce Reimer. Both were diagnosed with pathological phimosis, their parents were recommended to circumcise them, but something went wrong. Dr. Money told their parents that, since Bruce wouldn't be able to live happily as a boy with a disfigured penis, he should undergo gender reassignment surgery and recorded his experiment as the "John/Joan case".Dr. Money And The Boy With No Penis During the experiment, it was as succesful as John claimed, but back in Canada, Brenda continued to behave in masculine manner. She didn't want to play with her girl toys and instead preferred to play with his brother's toys. Despite taking female hormon supplements, his voice deepened as she grew. He decided that he didn't want to be a girl anymore and changed his name to David. In 2000, David and Brian alleged that Money forced the twins to rehearse sexual acts involving "thrusting movements", with David playing the bottom role. He said as a child, Money forced him go "down on all fours" with his brother, Brian Reimer, "up behind his butt" with "his crotch against" his "buttocks", and that Money forced David to have his "legs spread" with Brian on top. Money also forced the children to take their "clothes off" and engage in "genital inspections". On at "least one occasion", Money reportedly took photographs of the two children doing these activities. Money's rationale for these various treatments was his belief that "childhood 'sexual rehearsal play'" was important for a "healthy adult gender identity".Colapinto, J. (2001) As Nature Made Him: The Boy Who Was Raised as a Girl. Harper Perennial. He continued to have a masculine life and behavior, and became a husband and a father. Dr. Money's experiment was a total failure, although he kept claiming that it was a success. Facts vs. Feelings Although it is true that some of the aspects that make up gender are socially constructed, most of them are not "imposed by society", but have their roots in unalterable human biology. There exist physical differnces in the way male and female brains process speech. Before boys or girls are born, their brains develop with different hemispheric divisions of labor, and they are not set up in the same way, as opposing to the anti-scientific arguments for transgenderism that men and women are fully equal and therefore they can change whenever they desire. For instance, females tend to have verbal centers on both sides of the brain, while males only have them in the left hemisphere. Girls tend to use more words when discussing. Males not only have fewer verbal centers but also, often they have less connectivity between their word centers and their memories or feelings. When it comes to discussing feelings and emotions and senses together, girls tend to have an advantage, and they tend to have more interest in talking about these things.Brain Differences Between Genders (Gregory L. Jantz, Ph.D, Psychology Today, 2014): Sex differences between men and women are too significant to be ignored. Results show that although women are better at recognizing emotions and express themselves more easily, men show greater response to threatening cues (dominant, violent or agressive) and this may reflect in different behavioral response tendencies.A review on sex differences in processing emotional signals (M.E. Kret, B. De Gelder, 2012): Women also have more gray matter than men, and men more white matter than women.Sex Differences in Brain Gray and White Matter in Healthy Young Adults: Correlations with Cognitive Performance (Ruben C. Gur, Bruce I. Turetsky, Mie Matsui, Michelle Yan, Warren Bilker, Paul Hughett, and Raquel E. Gur, 1999) The neurological difference between males and females are not just found in humans. Male and female non-human primates also show display different behavioral tendencies in the absence of human-imposed social constructs. Sex differences in children's toy preferences are misthought by many to arise from gender socialization. However, it was found that male vervet monkeys (Cercopithecus aethiops sabaeus) prefer typically men-attributed toys (especifically, a car and a ball), and female monkeys preferred a doll and a pot.Sex differences in response to children's toys in nonhuman primates (Gerianne M Alexander, Melissa Hines, 2002) Human infants begin exhibiting in behavioral tendencies as early as six months of age, long before they have any understanding of gender identity and social expectations.Sex differences in 6 -month-old infants' affect and behavior: Impact on maternal caregiving (Marta Katherine Weinberg, University of Massachusetts Amherst, 1992): References